


Lesbi-honest

by everyperfectsummer



Category: October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: F/F, Fluff, because these two deserve happy shenanigans dammit, heteronormativity makes fools of us all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 03:51:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10528386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyperfectsummer/pseuds/everyperfectsummer
Summary: Liz starts to feel uncomfortable when Annie brings girls home. Does this make her homophobic?





	

 

When Liz graduates, the first job she finds is doing communications for a local insurance firm. It’s nothing glamorous, but it pays the bills.

 

Well, _almost_ pays the bills. She can’t quite afford to live anywhere on her own, which is why her dad finds a friend of the family’s kid who needs a roommate.

 

Liz’s first impression of Annie is that she’s harsh to the point of rude, laying down ground rules and refusing to budge on anything. Her second impression is that she _is_ rude and uncompromising, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s some saying about Southern hospitality and Midwestern niceness being polite yet unkind; Annie’s the opposite.

 

When Liz gets drunk and pukes on Annie’s shoes, she wakes up to a bill to replace them, and some painkillers next to a glass of water. When Liz finds a stray cat on her way home from work, Annie refuses to let it into the apartment, citing allergies, but manages to find it a home with one of her nieces in less than an hour.

 

That’s another thing about Annie. Just as Liz comes from a gigantic family, cousins upon cousin, Liz has a gaggle of nieces their age who show up all the time.  “My baby sister’s a generation older than I am,” Annie explains, to Liz’s bemusement, the first time Toby shows up to play chess with Annie. Liz, when told about “my adorable twin nieces,” had been picturing five year olds, not twenty somethings who show up to play chess and get hammered while Annie drinks them all under the table, but she finds herself happy to be counted as part of their family, and to count them among hers.

 

Gradually, as Liz’s cousins and Annie’s nieces colonize the apartment, their respective families start to feel like one joint group, so it doesn’t feel weird when Liz gets invited to a party at Toby’s place while Annie goes out to bar hop on her own.

 

It’s fun. The gang - Toby, May, their respective significant others, and the random teenagers who hang out with them, Raj, Quentin, and April - are all there, drinking hot chocolate, eating popcorn, and watching all of Star Wars while April passionately defends the prequels.

 

“Just because no one grew up with them as their introduction to Star Wars, everyone thinks they suck. If they’d been released before the original trilogy, everyone’d hate the originals and love the prequels instead!” she insists.

 

“They get a bad rap, but considering that half the story was built in, and they lost their editor, they did the best job they could,” Quentin agrees.

 

“Can we just agree to disagree?” Jazz, the main defender of the originals, says.

 

Tybalt, in the interest of peacekeeping, suggests, “How about we all agree that The Force Awakens is hands down the best?”

 

There’s a muttering of assent, until May says, “I don’t know, I kind of like Rogue One better.”

 

She gets hit in the face with a pillow - Liz isn’t quite sure who throws it - but once May belts Toby across the face with it, all out war descends.

 

By the time the pillow fight is over, it’s getting to be pretty late, and while she doesn’t have work in the morning, she’s tired and just wants to go to bed.

 

“I’m heading out, guys,” she says, unapologetically leaving them with cleanup duty. They’ve all done the same to her before. “Night!”

 

There’s a chorus of various goodbyes, and she heads out. She contemplates listening to music on the walk home, but decides that having ear buds in after dark is asking to get mugged, and so she makes the trudge home in silence.

 

When she gets there, the lights are on. “Honey, I’m home!” she calls, only to be greeted by the sight of Annie passionately kissing a brunette wearing the tallest heels Liz has ever seen.

 

Something in Liz’s stomach flips over uncomfortably, and she feels that something about the situation is wrong, _wrong,_ and as Annie pulls away Liz feels like reenacting the scene where she threw up on Annie’s shoes.

 

“Oh, hey Liz!” Annie says with a giggle, and if the situation wasn’t disturbing before, Annie giggling has definitely cemented it.

 

“Hey,” Liz says lamely.

 

“Let’s take this to my room, ok,” Annie says to the brunette, and amid a stream of giggles the two head off.

 

Liz walks into the kitchen, pours herself some gingerale, and starts to contemplate the question: is she a homophobe?

 

Sure, she has plenty of gay friends and family, but if “I know a gay person,” meant someone wasn’t homophobic, there’d be a lot fewer homophobes in the world than there are.

 

The next day after work, she heads to Tempe’s apartment instead of going home. Tempe takes on look at her face and starts making tea.

 

“Ok, sweetheart, tell me what’s going on,” Tempe says, pushing a steaming cup across the table.

 

“I just...I realized that I might be a bad person, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

 

“Bad how?”

 

“I think I’m homophobic.”

 

Tempe - beautiful, brilliant, and, most importantly in this situation, _bisexual_ Tempe - nods, no judgement on her face. “Honey, society screws us all up. It’d be more surprising if you weren’t.” Then, tentatively, she adds, “Did you do something homophobic to somebody?”

 

Liz shakes her head rapidly. “No! I didn’t do anything! I just came home, and saw Annie kissing some girl, and I felt so disgusted, and I don’t want to be disgusted by girls kissing, Temp.”

 

“Well,” Tempe says, taking a sip of tea, “Thoughts and actions are different. It’s one thing to have homophobic thoughts. We all do, at some point, even me, and I’m queer as hell. It’s another thing to act on them. So the fact that you didn’t and won’t act on them is a good thing.”

 

Liz feels warmed by Tempe’s faith in her, but - “What if I do act on them, though? Or what if Annie can tell I’m disgusted by it?”

 

“You’ve hung out with May and Jazz for almost a year now. If you looked disgusted every time they disgusted you, you guys probably wouldn’t be hanging out. And you’ve never seemed disgusted by my dates. People can’t read your mind, hun. We know what you do, not what you’re thinking.”

 

Liz shakes her head again. “They don’t disgust me. You don’t disgust me. It’s never been a problem until Annie.”

 

Tempe purses her lips, looking thoughtful. “Tell me more about what happened with Annie, then.”

 

“I don’t know,” Liz says, “I just, I came home and she was kissing someone, and she _giggled_ , she never giggles even when she’s really happy and some random stranger made her giggle? It’s not fair!”

 

Instead of solemn, Tempe now looks like she’s trying hard not to laugh. “Have you thought that you might not be homophobic?”

 

“What?”  


“It sounds like you’re jealous. Because that girl was kissing Annie and _you_ want to be kissing Annie.”

 

“ _What?”_ Liz thinks about it. Thinks of the feeling she’d had when she’d heard that giggle, of how flushed and pretty Annie had looked after the kiss, and - “Ohmygod. But. I’m _straight.”_

 

“Maybe you’re straight with one exception,” Tempe suggests, while Liz leans back in her chair, sips her tea, and has an identity crisis.

 

Several hours later, she leaves Tempe’s apartment, armed with lots of tea, and assurances that “You deserve the world, and your identity is whatever you want it to be.” She lets herself in, yells out “Hey, Annie, I’m home!” and hears a response from the kitchen.

 

First things first. “So…that girl I saw you with last night...are you guys dating now?”

 

Annie’s eyes visibly widen. “No, just a one night stand - did she say otherwise, because if so that’s a situation I need to deal with.”

 

“No, no, I was just wondering. Speaking of just wondering. Um. I was wondering if you might want to go out on a date with me?”

 

Annie’s already wide eyes grow even wider. “Aren’t you straight?”

 

Liz laughs nervously. “I thought so, until I saw you kissing that girl last night and realized I’d really like to kiss you.”

 

There’s silence for a beat, and then Annie says, in the most tentative voice Liz has ever heard her use, “I’d really like to kiss you, too.”

 

Liz beams.

**Author's Note:**

> This is based of the reddit story I can’t find of someone who thought they were homophobic because they felt uncomfortable every time their roommate brought boys over.  
> Edit: thanks to the lovely trialia, here's the link: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/4kz72i/update_me_22m_with_my_roommate_of_1_year_23m_im/


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